The Second Chance (Inferno Falls Book Three) (27 page)

I can’t answer her
Why
. I won’t be able to force out the words. I shake my head. “I was stupid. So, so stupid. And now, when I look around this house and see the way everything worked out just fine and I missed it? When I look at your
daughter?”

I think Maya is going to speak. Instead, she touches my hair, then my cheek. I have no idea how she’s feeling. What are the nuances? She misses me. She wants me back. But does she hate me too? I’ve given my confession. Does it merely unburden me, or soothe the in-between?
 

Maya leans closer.
 

I lean to match her.
 

And we kiss. It’s soft. Bittersweet. I taste lost years inside it. I can taste her guilt, her apology, my unfathomable regret. I hate myself, even as I feel something knitting between us. Maya had a moment of weakness, but for me, that moment dragged for a decade.
 

Mistakes can be forgiven.
 

But wasted time is gone forever.
 

We come apart, and she blinks at me in the quiet.
 

“Make love to me,” she whispers.
 

But I can’t. I think I love her all over again, but my heart is too heavy with the weight of shattered dreams.

“In time,” I say.

CHAPTER 31

The sheets on my childhood bed are soft, but the space between me and nothing feels too large.
 

In my teens, my parents upgraded me to a queen from a twin, and I’ve always enjoyed spreading out. In my own tiny house, I could only fit a queen in the slightly larger of the two tiny bedrooms, but the few times I’ve traveled, I’ve slept in kings and told myself that one of these days, I’d get myself one. I love the space. I want to be all arms and legs, free to roam as I wander the landscape of my dreams.
 

But right now, the queen, moved from its old home to my parents’ guest room, feels impossibly large. I have too much land to wander. Too many covers. I feel like a kid all over again, now huddled in one corner of a field. The empty space to my side mocks me. It needs to be filled. Someone should be here with me, in the dark, looking through the window at the stars.
 

The house is quiet. My old bedroom, now with the twin bed for Mackenzie, is upstairs; right beside it is my parents’ room. I’m on the ground floor now. Away from the others, I feel so alone. I half want to go upstairs and climb into bed with my daughter, or carry her down here to sleep with me, the way we sometimes used to when she had bad dreams.
 

But as it feels now, it’s like there’s no one else in the house, the town, the world. If I’d stayed on the couch as planned, I’d at least have the grandfather clock’s beating heart and the freezer ticking with freshly made ice. But once Grady realized I’d be staying too (kind of strange for me to go home and leave him here where there’s plenty of space), he insisted I take the guest room. Maybe because he was being chivalrous, or maybe he knew he’d be restless, pacing, unable to sleep for the heavy burden I inadvertently set atop his shoulders.

We shouldn’t have talked. We should have kept lying to each other and ourselves, pretending everything was fine. My idea was to bring it all out into the open, but whereas I found I could face my guilt, neither of us was prepared for the breadth of Grady’s.
 

I can only imagine how he feels. I feel some of it too, but I was willing to end the stalemate years ago, whereas he was never able to let go. At any point, he could have reached out, and we could have begun again. But after a year of absence, I suppose he couldn’t face all that wasted time. He turned his head and allowed it to stretch into a second year. The feeling doubled.
 

Ten years.
Ten years we’ll never get back.
 

It’s not enough to tell Grady that we can wipe the slate clean and start over. For a while, he’ll need to process. Pine for the time he threw away, as if that will turn back the clock. I’m ready now. Especially after that kiss, I desperately want him. But I’ll have to wait. Time is an enemy between us.
 

In the room, it’s quiet. My door is closed. Grady insisted. He said he gets up throughout the night, and also that his cat might wander, might fall asleep on my chest and startle me. Right now, I’d welcome the company, the purr, the beating of another rapid heart.
 

I feel hollow inside. Too lonely. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way. Even when Grady left, I had anger to comfort me. Even when I was pregnant without the father to help, fear was my eternal companion. But now I have nothing but emptiness. I’m a shell in the dark, staring out at the moon.
 

I turn sideways, still trying to get comfortable. I turn the other way. The sheets are soft, but they feel like creeper vines binding my arms and legs. No position works. I’m either sweating or cold. I can’t spread out or huddle. Every time I close my eyes, I feel like I’m in an abyss rather than restful, but the night will never pass with them open. I need to sleep but can’t. I’ve been trying. The past haunts me, and every time I try to relax, something else pops up in front of me like a boogeyman.
 

I face the wall. My thrashing must unseat something on the end table, because I hear a tiny crack, like something tapping the floor. I ignore it. I’m the opposite of quiet in here because the silence is oppressive, like a heavy blanket above meant to smother me. I know what I’m doing; it’s like sighing in a conversation’s lull to show the other person my boredom. I think that part of me needs Grady, outside, to hear me being restless. Knowing I’m tormented too. Knowing that nobody is sleeping peacefully. Knowing I’m all alone, breathing long and low, my chest heavy, feeling like I’m brimming with tears that won’t quite come.
 

I force myself to be still as I stay turned toward the wall. In the new silence, I can hear my heart’s every thumping beat, and every drag of my breath.
 

I hear the minute crack of door leaving jamb, of that door parting the darkness.

Something heavy settles on the bed behind me.
 

I keep watching the wall without turning. My heart is pounding. I feel pressure on my hip, like the weight of a hand. My breath betrays me. I want to hold it, eyes open, feeling something in my chest that I can barely articulate. Every inch of me is alive, but I’m afraid to move.

“I remember this bed,” says a voice.
 

I blink. I hold myself stock still. I don’t even twitch, suddenly unsure if any of this is real, afraid to break the spell.
 

“It feels so long ago. I remember this notch.” I feel a shifting as he reaches, likely to point to something I can’t see but know all too well. “I joked that you were keeping score. You know: notches on a bedpost. I was so nervous, I just sounded stupid. I don’t think either of us wanted to admit how afraid we were, the first time for both of us.”
 

I hear a sigh. The weight behind me shifts back as he resettles.
 

“I barely remember that kid, Maya. He was so full of life but so stupid. He didn’t think. He just reacted. I remember the way you used to tell me that I was cool in a way other guys weren’t. But I remember thinking I was a phony. I wasn’t ‘cool’ at all. I was scared out of my mind. Not on the surface maybe, but beneath. Even before my parents died, I never felt like I fit, and it only got worse after they were gone. I didn’t fit at school, didn’t fit outside of it. Maybe that came off as bad boy rebellion, but it looked different from the inside. I always felt untethered. Like I didn’t have a home base, even when I was here. I wasn’t comfortable anywhere. Not until that night. Here, in this bed. With you.”
 

I won’t look up. Whatever he has to say, I won’t interrupt, even if it’s only with my gaze.
 

But he doesn’t continue. Instead, I feel his hand shift on my hip. It slides up my body to my shoulder, to my neck. He delicately rearranges my hair, sweeping it back. Other than the sensations, he’s vanished. Silence is screaming. I can’t even hear his breath, as if he’s holding it.
 

Then he’s lying behind me, his length along mine, his warm breath on my bared neck.
 

“I was thinking, out there,” Grady says. “And I realized something terrible. Something I hope isn’t true, though I’m afraid it is.”
 

Finally, I turn. I roll mostly onto my back then turn my head to meet his eyes. He looks so sad, it breaks my heart.
 

“It’s something I don’t think I ever said to you,” Grady practically whispers. “Just one more thing I did wrong as a dumb kid.”

My heart beats harder. I can feel him breaking. But I need to meet him halfway, so I don’t let him speak. I arch up to kiss him. He’s taken enough steps tonight. The next one is the hardest, but for now I know all I need to. Maybe all I can take.
 

The kiss is softer than the first. Quiet. Hesitant, backed with latent passion waiting to explode. Every heartbeat spreads sensation to my lips, to our slowly intertwining hands. We’re both holding back. In the dead-silent room, I hear every little wet sound we make as we come together and break apart. As we shift, breathe, and move our hands ever so slightly. I feel like there’s a bomb in my chest. I can sense the heat coming off of Grady, like he’s feeling the same.
 

Every movement is soft and slow but barely controlled.
 

We kiss. And kiss. And kiss.
 

Grady strips the covers out of the way. I sleep in a tee and little shorts. His hand wanders under my cotton top. His touch, after all this waiting, is electric. I can barely take the sensation of his fingers on my bare skin, crawling higher. He cups my breast, and when he finds my nipple, my eyes close and I exhale, bending into his neck.
 

He pulls my shirt higher, baring me to the room. He’s a ghost of himself in the moonlight. The absence of visuals intensifies my other senses.
 

His thumb rolls across my hard nipple, stippling my skin with gooseflesh. I feel the way my lips, wet with his affection, cool as his breath brushes them.
 

My nose flares as I curl against him, inhaling his long-forgotten scent.
 

I hear the sounds of our kisses. I hear the rhythm of his desperate breath by my face, my neck. I can even hear the way his shirt rustles as my own hands explore, the sliding noises as his hand turns south and runs beneath the elastic of my shorts.

And I can taste him on my lips. When I kiss him, I remember the flavor of his affection. I move down his neck, tasting his skin’s slight salty tang.
 

Everything I’ve missed.
 

Everything, I suspect, I’ve spent the intervening years trying to find again.

He slips my shirt away, and I free Grady of his. He has the lean, hard feel of someone who’s lived by his wits. My hands explore. He’s firm flesh and moving muscle. I want to touch, and touch, and touch.
 

As his mouth moves to my chest, I tilt my head back and exhale a decade’s heaving weight. He kisses down my middle; I’m sighing into the emptiness that’s been my only friend. His fingers hook under my waistband, and a second later I’m totally bare, vulnerable as a virgin. I feel the movement of the room’s air, his motions a breeze as he moves around me.
 

It’s like I’ve never been touched.
 

It’s like we’re right back where we left off, with no time lost between us.
 

I remember every inch of him. His hands and mouth feel so right on me, it’s like we never parted. We’re a key in a lock, each body remembering the other. I part my legs a little, urging his attention where I need it most. But my hands wander as well, and soon my fingers are beneath his unzipped jeans, wrapping his rock-hard shaft.
 

I tell myself to go slow, to make it last. But at the same time my own body’s betraying me. I’m sliding around on the bed, on my back, my hips rising and undulating as his hand lingers on my belly. I want him lower. If he doesn’t touch me soon, I’ll die.
 

I close my eyes as Grady kisses down my neck and up, gently sweeping my hair away to nibble my ear. Nobody else has ever done that to me, and my body responds as if he’s entered a password.
This is Grady
, it cries out, feeling his delicious welcome.
This is Grady beside you, after all these years of nothing
.
 

I slide his pants away, my hand shamelessly tugging his cock, unable to keep things slow. The fervor of his kisses increases, and I feel him throb in my hand, the tip already leaking. My legs part farther, and finally his hand moves down to find my desperate sex. I want him inside me, and he obliges, his fingers painting portraits in my flowing wetness.
 

I’m fully on my back, my knees sighing to the side. I feel an orgasm already building as his fingers trail upward across my clit. But for almost ten years I’ve been coming without Grady inside me, but I won’t again, maybe never, ever again.
 

I take his hand and pull it away. My pussy screams protest, but a second later I’m shoving Grady down, rolling us over, sliding down his body to take him in my mouth.